On This Day: FLARE Asserts the Importance of Studying Presidential First Ladies
Association celebrates its third year in shaping a network of experts and researchers around first ladies history.
It wasn’t all that long ago when salient, yet casual conversations were struck among a group of seven women with distinct expertises on America’s first ladies. They talked about their shared interests in research into the iconic women in the White House. They agreed educating the general public about presidential spouses' contributions to the presidency and society was equally important. And, they felt compelled to encourage future generations to unabashedly pursue studying first ladies.
The womens’ convictions stem from the efforts of their North Star—pioneering first ladies scholar Lewis A. Gould, a political historian, who once said history that excludes first ladies and the lives of women is “a record that is limited, false and wrong.”
The conversation would continue until three years ago today when the women launched the nonprofit First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE) —the first-ever organization offering a professional network for people interested in furthering the legacies of America’s first ladies.
“We thought we were doing something revolutionary,” Nancy Kegan Smith, president of FLARE and a former archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration who retired as Director of the Presidential Materials Division in 2013, tells East Wing Magazine in a recent phone interview.
Their collective vision was an association designed to attract a range of individual and institutional members who shared a common purpose, but did not necessarily know what others were doing in the space, says Diana Carlin, vice president of FLARE in an email.
“The seven of us came from different disciplines, backgrounds, and perspectives on the role of first lady,” says Carlin, professor emerita of communication at Saint Louis University and co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women. “We were aware that more was going on with research, publications, conference presentations, and documentation of first ladies’ lives than anyone of us or any single discipline was aware.”
For Myra Gutin, immediate past president of FLARE and author of The President's Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century and Barbara Bush: Presidential Matriarch, an organization devoted to first ladies had been her goal years before formal discussions began.
“Part of my motivation … was to provide a place where many of us could submit our research and see it published,” Gutin says in an email. “Like others in Communication, my work had been turned down because the field, we would later come to know as First Ladies Studies, did not fit neatly into the established boxes … of American History, American Studies or Political Science.”
“Like others in Communication, my work had been turned down because the field, we would later come to know as First Ladies Studies, did not fit neatly into the established boxes … of American History, American Studies or Political Science.”
—Myra Gutin
Ideally, FLARE would bring them all together with the shared interest of building out the field of First Ladies Studies.
Since that founding day on June 21, 2021, FLARE’s impact hasn’t gone unnoticed.
American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., was FLARE’s first partner. Their support, says Smith, “has been essential in getting FLARE started and continuing.”
Since then, FLARE launched a website that serves as a hub for networking among its growing membership. The association also has a growing institutional membership, which includes the National First Ladies Library & Museum, universities, the White House Historical Association, presidential institutes, historical societies, and most recently the National Archives and Records Administration. See the full list here.
In April, FLARE in collaboration with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and American University School of Public Affairs, co-sponsored the first, First Ladies Conference at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum since the original First Ladies Conference took place in the same place in 1984 with former First Ladies Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter convening. FLARE’s first conference included panel discussions featuring Susan Ford Bales, daughter of Gerald and Betty Ford; and Gutin, who attended the original first ladies conference in 1984—an event that Smith says kicked off the field of First Ladies Studies. The conference was preceded by the annual Gerald Ford Foundation First Ladies Luncheon headlined by sitting First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
And this summer, according to Smith, FLARE is expected to launch its e-journal, the first journal devoted to first ladies research and education.
“The e-journal should provide a great forum for bringing together studies of first ladies, especially on specific topics,” says Molly Wertheimer, a founding FLARE member and professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and affiliate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
Looking ahead, the association has plans to create curricula for kindergarten through 12th grade teachers that tie to social studies standards, to focus on increasing membership, to continue collaborations with its institutional partners, and to convene another conference.
All of this so far, the board believes, swiftly addresses their chief complaint: that first ladies have been underrepresented in the press and undervalued in history despite the important work they do.
“We not only share what we do know,” says Carlin, “but we reveal the gaps that exist to encourage a new generation to explore these women’s stories within a wide variety of contexts.”
East Wing Magazine is a member of FLARE.